Exploring ice

This afternoon Mrs Waites came into our lesson and showed us something she had found - some Lego people who were inside blocks of ice! How do you think they got there? We thought perhaps they had run away and got inside the freezer. We agreed they probably didn't like being in the ice, so how could we get them out...?

We shared ideas about what we could do to get them out. Some people suggested we smash the ice, but that might hurt the Lego people. Harry said "make them warm and they will turn into water." We talked about what this means - when ice turns into water it's called melting. We talked about what we could do to make the ice melt. Lexi thought we should "put them in the hot sun" and Rhys thought we could "wrap the ice in paper". We decided to try some different things and see if we could make the ice melt. Some of the blocks of ice were bigger than the others. Harry said "the bigger one will take longer to melt because it's bigger and the smaller one will be quicker."

We took one of our trapped Lego men outside in a bowl and talked about where would be the best place to leave him. Grace chose a place not under the canopy because "when the sun comes out it will shine here and make it warm so it will melt."

We talked about what we do when it's cold outside to help keep ourselves warm - we put on more clothes and coats. We decided to wrap one of our Lego men up in a towel to see if that would help the ice melt quickly.

We saw the bubble wrap in the classroom and decided to try that too, so we wrapped another Lego man's ice block in bubble wrap.

We knew that we needed the ice to be warm to make it melt back into water, so Harry suggested we "put it in some warm water." We talked about where to get warm water from - Ollie said "turn the hot tap". We put a bowl in the sink and ran the water until it was warm. Then we put the ice in the water and watched as it started to melt.

We were using our science skills of observation as we watched the ice melt. It got smaller and also changed from being white to clear. Then we saw the Lego man's legs come out of the ice, then the rest of his body came out. He was free!

We checked the other men trapped in the ice, but they hadn't melted yet. We checked them again at the end of the day and saw that they had got smaller and the towel and bubble wrap were wet, because the ice was starting to melt and the water was making things wet. There was also some water in the bowl outside where the ice had started to melt. We're going to check tomorrow morning and see if the ice has melted and we can rescue the other Lego people!

In our Play and Learn time we explored more ice in the water tray, including large blocks of ice and small ice cubes. Trystan found that if you pour water in the ice "it crackles" and observed that the water was getting colder. Harry said "it's because of the ice." The boys added more warm water from the tap into the water tray to help the ice melt quicker.

Well done to Harry who earned a housepoint this afternoon for his fantastic science work. He showed super knowledge and understanding, used good vocabulary and made good suggestions about our investigation. Well done Harry!